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Wednesday 20 February, 2008
GAMEPLAY:
The more I played this game the more I began to notice how unique it is. The gameplay that is set up like a gameboard allows each player to "roll the dice" by hitting a block that randomly cycles through numbers. It has a very limited range of where you can walk. sometimes you have to choose between a fork in a road to follow the path to the star. Sometimes you can buy an item, or a win an item by landing on a green item space. These are another aspect of the game, which only one player plays. It is like the 1v3 except that there are no other players involved. The one I liked the most was the barrel switch, where it shows all the items, covers them in barrels and switches them around to try and confuse you. These don't really take time or a unnecessary skill like most video games.
The controls are usually uniform throughout all the mini games. The player usually only has to use A B and or Z along with the joystick. Usually these games consist of jumping up platforms, pressing A and B repeatedly, and or timing the buttons at the same time. At the rare occasion that there are more buttons needed, there are instructions before the game. There is also a very nifty option that allows you to play a "practice game". You can theoretically play the game as much as you want with no penally to any of the players, just beneficiary practice time for everyone to become more acquainted with the game.
DESIGN:
This game was very well designed and I can see why it is on the classics list. There are many different levels, and each level has its own special secrets. But the one consistency throughout the levels is the mini games. The same mini games, 2v2 games, and 1v3 games are present in every level. Yet each has their own ending when the level finishes. There is a sequence of events that lead to a "mystery hero" which is then unveiled as the winner of the game.
A big challenge of the game, which is somewhat out of the user's control is the random dice block. When a 2 characters are really close to a star, it is eminent that you get the larger number that makes it all the way to the star or it can mean the difference between being a winner or loser. Another frustrating part is when you don't have enough coins, so you want to get a number low enough to stand right in front of the star so you can try and acquire more coins in time.
There is so much social interaction in this game it is ridiculous. After every round of board play, you face off with every other player with usually only one winner. A lot of the time you are chasing after another player trying to hurt them in order to pull ahead, but this can lead to other players intervening and messing you up. In the case that there are teams, then it creates social ties with the teammates, and an enemy team which allows for a lot of trash talking. This is intense because you have to rely on your teammate to pull through in order to be able to win the mini game. Both of your coin counts are at stake. In the event of a 1v3 this causes so much tension between the players that it almost starts a riot. Usually the 1 player has some type of advantage, but still a very hard obstacle to overcome. So if the 1 player makes, he has full bragging rights over all the other players, and if he loses; all the other 3 players gang up on him and he is the only person out of the 4 not to get coins.
The game does exhibit emergence complexity due to its simple controls and simple goals in each of the mini games. There is also a lot of technique involved in these games. Sometimes you have to wait and learn the most efficient way for accomplishing the task at hand. Sometimes the task is to press Z and R. But this doesn't necessarily mean who can press it the fastest. Other instances are to jump in the air with A and press Z to pound something into the ground. With experience you see that the game puts in subtle differences in how high you jump when you press Z and how far the object you are pounding goes down.
All in all this game is very fun and one of the most unique ideas for a video game I've seen in a while.
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